Alyssa Mullins 0:00
Hi, everyone, I’m Alyssa.
Adam Jones 0:02
And I’m Adam!
Alyssa Mullins 0:03
And welcome to your weekly social!
So, today…
Adam Jones 0:11
What are we talking about?
Alyssa Mullins 0:12
We’re gonna talk about algorithms.
Adam Jones 0:14
And how they suck, or how they’re awesome? Or both?
Alyssa Mullins 0:18
Probably both; a little bit more on how they suck, but you know…
Adam Jones 0:21
Okay, so did you see what Twitter put out like yesterday? Maybe a day or two ago?
Alyssa Mullins 0:28
Not really. I kind of like saw it and was like, “Okay,” and like, kept moving.
Adam Jones 0:33
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. So I’m not a big Twitter person. I have kind of avoided it for a while, but I’m kind of slowly coming back a little bit. And I noticed as I’m scrolling on my mobile device- it doesn’t do on desktop as much- and my first like, five or six items are sponsored or boosted or like, trending stuff before I get to people I actually like. But even then, it’s not chronological order; like, it’s a post from Rand Fishkin two weeks ago or something. (He’s the SEO guy I like) But Twitter just came out and said, Oh, yeah, here’s a separate tab for you to see the latest!
Alyssa Mullins 1:16
So instead of like, your home, and that’s kind of like your main feed, there’s a whole separate…
Adam Jones 1:22
A secondary feed, a secondary feed for your latest.
Alyssa Mullins 1:27
Interesting. And latest is just whoever’s tweeted, or?
Adam Jones 1:30
Whoever you’re following, what they’re tweeting, retweeting, maybe some comments here and there. But primarily, it’s just chronological, bringing it back. Do you have that problem? Because I like chronological, I actually prefer chronological.
Alyssa Mullins 1:44
I do enjoy chronological because then I feel like I’m not missing out on things.
Adam Jones 1:48
What do you miss out on?
Alyssa Mullins 1:50
If I’m thinking for my personal feed, I’m kind of shifting from Twitter and moving on to Instagram. Instagram was at one point chronological, which was really nice. And then they had an update, and that was a while ago, but they haven’t fixed or changed it back since. Where now it’s not necessarily chronological, it’s just kind of what doing really good? And what’s getting the most likes the most traction, you know, what are people interacting with more? So I’ll get a post from like, two hours ago, to a day ago, to three days ago; and then again, like two hours ago, one hour ago.
Adam Jones 2:32
Interesting. And then does yours change based on like, the day that you’re on there?
Alyssa Mullins 2:39
So if I have more than enough time, on my hand, I will like scroll through Instagram. And then it’ll tell me, “Hey, like, you’re all caught up now!” I’m like, “Am I? Because I don’t remember seeing that post that’s under there.” So what defines being all caught up? If I were to look at something today on my feed, and then shift it tomorrow, I could probably honestly still see the same post. If it was like a carousel, I would see like a different photo, because that photo performed better.
Adam Jones 3:10
So LinkedIn is a little bit different. LinkedIn is fascinating, because there is literally not enough content creators in the platform. And especially as you get towards the weekend; it’ll actually give you stuff from two weeks ago, three weeks ago, four weeks ago, from people you follow. But maybe you’re not like actively working with them, or trying to engage with them. Because it has nothing else to show you.
Alyssa Mullins 3:38
Interesting.
Adam Jones 3:39
So that being said, you should be on LinkedIn! I know a couple weeks ago we said don’t do it- that’s for hiring. But like, if you’re trying to be content creator, LinkedIn has some good stuff and some good space going. So then, did you hear about the Facebook unfollow guy?
Alyssa Mullins 3:57
No.
Adam Jones 3:58
So he got permanently banned from Facebook, for making a Chrome extension that goes in and unfollows everything. All your friends, pages, and groups.
Alyssa Mullins 4:19
Why?…
Adam Jones 4:21
That’s the beautiful part. And I want to I want to clarify something really, really quick. So, you can be friends with somebody, you can like a page, and you can be in a group. But you do have to say, “I want to follow, I want to receive notifications. And I want to be engaged with this group.” Right? And that’s like YouTube, right? Like, we always say, “Please subscribe, like this video and hit the bell to subscribe!” (You should do that now.) You have to hit the bell for people to receive that notification. Likewise, you have to adjust your follow settings. per each friend, Facebook page, and group.
Alyssa Mullins 5:05
Interesting. Okay, cuz I know like on other platforms, you can kind of like mute people to where, you know, “I don’t want to see what this person’s posting,” and so you mute them. You’re still following them, you just can’t see anything that they post and anything that they do. But you have to do that for each person on Facebook?
Adam Jones 5:24
So in Facebook, you have to go through and unfollow each person. And that’s like a permanent mute (semi permanent mute, like you can re-follow them later). But it’s like muting them, but just getting rid of it completely. So this guy, he made this Chrome extension, and I have used it- I do recommend it. It’s fun. It’s actually really fun. And it’s is not injecting code. You literally like you activate it, and then you see your Facebook page, open up, go into settings, show you everybody you’re following, and then it just unfollows and just like literally clicks the button for you on everybody and everything. And it is eerily quiet. Like, you’ll sit there and you can refresh… And there’s no posts, nothing. Your feed will be empty. You might get some advertisements. But your feed is empty. Which inherently is not what Facebook wants, right? They’re trying to make it engaging. But what I think Facebook has lost (and we wrote a blog article, it’s up on our website)- Facebook, in an attempt to show you content that you actually like, you’re missing out on content that you actually like.
Alyssa Mullins 6:45
Got it.
Adam Jones 6:47
And after you run the unfollow tool, and it’s really quiet for a little time, you can go through and then just be like, “Okay, who’s my friend list? Who do I actually want to follow? What are the pages that actually want to care about? Where are the groups that actually really want to be a part of?” And I went through, and this was like, awesome. I had fun going through and cleaning. And just like, “Wow, a lot of these groups have been archived? So okay, I’ll remove myself from these groups. Okay, these pages. Yeah, I don’t really care about this anymore.” And kind of clean house, and I actually like my Facebook feed now!
Alyssa Mullins 7:24
I think that’s where you would benefit from it more than I would. On my Facebook, it’s primarily for family. And, like friends that when we all made it when we were like, I don’t know, like 16. And you know, I have joined some groups and everything. But it’s groups that I’m interested in now. Right now and I have been like, you know, Avatar Meme Groups, or Food Cooking Groups, and things like that. For me, my feed, when I do go on it; it’s more or less things that I like. And then there’s things that family or friends say and they’ll make their posts, but those honestly get kind of hidden between all the groups that I’m in. And I’m okay with that, though. Because I like seeing what the groups that I’m in post, more than anything else.
Adam Jones 8:21
I think that’s where even for some individuals who hate their feeds, especially in Facebook- and once again, this guy was permanently banned from Facebook for making this extension- and to me, that’s a helpful tool. I wish that was like a native Facebook feature, because Facebook will do this thing where they try to give you what you like, which, especially in terms of political stuff, it gives you things that you’re going to comment, share and interact with more, whether it’s things that you agree with or disagree with. So it’s just going to feed you more of the same. And so then this is a way for you to actually be able to exit all of that and have a good fresh start.
Alyssa Mullins 9:08
It’s unfortunate that he was banned.
Adam Jones 9:10
I know, it’s such a cool tool!
Alyssa Mullins 9:12
Can imagine being permanently banned?
Adam Jones 9:14
Yes.
Alyssa Mullins 9:15
Oh.
I can’t imagine my feet being cleaned out. But I don’t know what I do if like, I tried it and then my feed was just blank.
Adam Jones 9:29
And it gets to that idea of, what are we even using these platforms for? And deeper and deeper, Facebook and the Timeline/Newsfeed doesn’t actually give you anything. Really, a lot of people are using Facebook for the Messenger and for Groups and the Marketplace and that’s where it’s become king. Like, Craigslist is not a thing anymore. It’s mostly died because of Facebook Marketplace. And you get to see people you interact with, and you’re like ,”Okay, this person is much less potential for a scam being identified and known versus a Craigslist stranger.” It brings a lot of safety to it. And so, do we even need the Newsfeed?
Alyssa Mullins 10:16
That’s a… that’s a question.
Adam Jones 10:19
That’s something we could talk about next week, on next week’s Weekly Social!
Alyssa Mullins 10:22
That’s true. If you enjoyed the video, comment, like, subscribe- we said earlier we’re gonna say it again- hit the bell!
Adam Jones 10:29
All the bells
And make sure to give thumbs ups- those are also called “Likes.” There’s a share button somewhere that has like an arrow; hit the box with the arrow on it, and send it to people on their Facebook newsfeeds!
Alyssa Mullins 10:43
But yeah, thanks guys for watching, and we’ll see you guys next week!
